After the fall of Bashar al-Assad on December 8, 2024, tens of thousands of Syrians loyal to the deposed president and fearing reprisals from the country's new leaders, the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), fled to Lebanon, with many of them taking little traveled roads. But on Saturday, December 28, a number of officers and soldiers were arrested at the Arida crossing in northern Lebanon and handed over to the new Syrian authorities. Along with other Syrians, they were part of a group of around 70 people arrested the previous day at a roadblock on a road linking the north to Beirut.

On the same day as the expulsions, a bus carrying Syrian nationals was intercepted in the evening on the outskirts of Tripoli in Bab al-Tebbaneh, a suburb historically hostile to the Al-Assad regime. The passengers were handed over to the Lebanese army in front of a crowd avid for the arrest of any Syrian soldier who had defected. The following day, a similar incident took place in the Akkar region, bordering Syria, which was also a refuge for opponents of the Damascus rule during the early years of the anti-al-Assad uprising.

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